Díaz-Balart: Time to indict Raúl Castro for Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down
South Florida’s Cuban-American members of Congress are asking Donald Trump’s administration to prosecute Raúl Castro over the 1996 shoot-down of two planes belonging to the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue volunteer group, U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart announced this week, reigniting a decades-old campaign in Miami for justice.
His comments, followed by a letter to the president on Friday, come ahead of the 30th anniversary of the attack on Feb. 24, 1996 — perhaps the most dramatic escalation in U.S.-Cuba tensions since the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s.
In the aftermath of the attack on the group’s rescue planes, which scoured the Florida Straits in search of Cuban boaters and rafters attempting to flee the repressive Castro regime, President Bill Clinton implemented sweeping sanctions against the island. A federal grand jury indicted two Cuban fighter pilots and a commanding Cuban Air Force general seven years later in the murders of the four Brothers to the Rescue volunteers — three of whom were Americans.
But for many Cubans living in exile, neither Clinton nor any future administration responded forcefully enough.
In Miami, the attack on the rescue planes was widely considered an act of terrorism directed from the top. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro took responsibility at the time, saying “we gave the order” to the military after conferring with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his brother, Raúl, then Cuba’s defense minister. In 2006, el Nuevo Herald obtained audio of Raúl Castro describing to Cuban reporters how he had planned with military officers to shoot down the planes.
The Cuban government said the planes had invaded their sovereign airspace following incidents in the preceding months in which Brothers to the Rescue planes had dropped political leaflets over Havana. But an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization commissioned by the United Nations concluded the shoot-down happened over international waters.
Campaigns to indict the Castro brothers have come and gone in the years since. Citizen groups have led grassroots efforts. During the first Trump administration, Díaz-Balart and now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio encouraged the president to launch an investigation.
Appearing Tuesday on Miguel Cossio’s “La Resistencia” program on América Radio Miami, Díaz-Balart said this week that there is still time, even with Fidel dead and Raúl now 94 years old. He said he’s planning to ask for an investigation and prosecution against Raúl Castro for his role in ordering the killing of the pilots.
“It’s very simple: there’s the evidence, let them review the evidence and take the necessary steps,” Díaz-Balart said. “When there is a person who says ‘I killed’ or ‘I gave the order to kill an individual’ and there is evidence, we must act on that evidence. That’s what we’re going to be officially asking for.”
Díaz-Balart noted that the Department of Justice late last year indicted on immigration fraud charges a former Cuban Air Force pilot who Miami’s congressional delegation has called “notoriously linked” to the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes. The congressman told Cossio the pilot could play a role in bringing new charges against Castro.
On Friday, Díaz-Balart and Miami Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez signed a letter addressed to Trump, requesting the president consider indicting the surviving Castro brother. In the letter, also signed by Cuban-American Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, the representatives cited el Nuevo Herald’s report about Raúl Castro among the evidence to support an indictment.
“We believe unequivocally that Raul Castro is responsible for this heinous crime; it is time for him to be brought to justice,” states the letter.
The three Miami Republicans have been ramping up promises that regime change in Cuba is on the horizon since the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro at the start of the new year.
Díaz-Balart’s comments come just weeks after the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and arrested Maduro on years-old charges of drug trafficking, possession of machine guns and other offenses. His arrest came after months of the U.S. bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, including at least one follow-up strike targeting survivors.
“President Trump’s decisive actions have brought us closer than ever to the collapse of the Communist regime in Cuba,” Rep. Giménez said this week.
In the latest effort to increase pressure on Cuba, the Miami delegation sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments this week to ramp up sanctions against Cuba by revoking oil licenses to U.S. companies that operate in Cuba.
Cuban-American business and philanthropist Mike Fernandez said efforts for Brothers to the Rescue prosecutions are a distraction from other pressing issues Miami voters are facing. He has sharply criticized Miami’s members of Congress over the past year for supporting Donald Trump during his aggressive immigration crackdown.
“It’s a political game that they’re playing. Ignore it. And they’re playing the Cuban-American community by scratching their itch that comes out every few years,” Fernandez told the Miami Herald this week. “Let’s focus on the future. Let’s focus on our children and our grandchildren.”
Others say criminal charges for the incident still matter, three decades on.
“Raúl Castro should follow his subordinates who executed his directive and were charged with this crime. He should be indicted,” the former and current directors of the Center for a Free Cuba wrote in 2023. “Failure to hold them accountable encourages Cuba to commit other egregious acts of state terror.”
Miami Herald staff writer Nora Gámez Torres contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
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